Why I bother...

Hi, I'm John. I'm going to try not to make this sound like a dating profile or the musings of a pretentious douche. I love writing and reading. I love science fiction, fantasy and horror, or better yet, a mix of all three. This goes for books, films and videogames. My favourite writer is indisputably Stephen King, partly for his novels of course, and partly for 'On Writing', which, if you haven't read it and you're a writer, yeah, what are you doing with your life?

I'm 32, married to Debby and bonded through DNA to Haley- Jayne, my daughter. I live on the North Coast of N. Ireland in a little town called Ballymoney, which is full of coffee shops and not much else. That's cool though, I adore coffee. I don't need it, nope, I can quit anytime I want.

This blog is going to be about writing, books, films, video-games, Doctor Who, and let's face it, probably Rick and Morty. It'll also be about the challenges of being self-published, and trying to get an agent/ traditional publisher.

I love writing because it allows me to create worlds and characters, but that's not why I do it. I do it because I have worlds and characters inside me who want to get out (okay, getting close to pretentious and/or mentally unstable now) Seriously though, I want to tell stories. I want people to get immersed in them, be entertained and hopefully moved by them. I want to share these worlds with you.

My first book, Legend and Lore: In Human Skin has been in the making for quite some time. It's been percolating in my brain in some form or another for over ten years. In fact, a few years ago I wrote an entire manuscript based on the concept, decided I didn't like it, scrapped it and started again. I have big plans for the series, three or four books. The novel is a distillation of staying up too late reading Arthur C. Clarke's 'Mysterious World' as a boy, getting freaked out watching the X- Files, and generally looking up at the night sky and wondering what might be out there.

Somebody once said writing is a kind of magic, and that's true in so many ways. You take something that exists solely in your head and translate it into readable symbols so that others can beam it into their head. In some arcane interaction between your mind and the reader's, facilitated by paper and ink, worlds and characters come to life. That is magical, ladies and gentlemen, magical, and that's why I bother.

That last paragraph isn't pretentious, it's simply true.